<p>The discussion in this thread, having strayed from the OP's original message, seems to conflate different concepts. Intellectual is not the same thing as intelligent, nor is intelligent the same thing as wise or commonsensical or quick of one's feet or having a good memory. </p>
<p>For what it's worth, the OED broadly defines "Intellectualism" as 'The doctrine that knowledge is wholly or mainly derived from the action of the intellect, i.e. from pure reason.' In everyday parlance, an intellectual has a specific meaning. When one talks of Chinese or Russian intellectuals, one seldom includes doctors or engineers among them; it does not mean doctors or engineeers are not as smart as writers or academics, or as heavily credentialed.</p>
<p>I don't think most of us are confused about intelligent vs. intellectual. Certainly not myself. But since you brought it up, the same, i.m.o., applies to the discussion. Obviously I was taken too literally by the "geniuses" comment. Sorry. I just got tired of the long words & repetitions. Don't need anyone quoting me a dictionary for the distinction. (Rolls eyes.) </p>
<p>10 highly intellectual Ph.D's at College X vs. one extraordinarily intellectual Ph.D at College Y does not make College X "more" intellectual than College Y. Unless one is still a child cognitively, and thinks of "more" in a very limited & spatial sense.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I have met true intellectuals from many paths & walks of life, & with many variations in educational levels. I do not yet have a Ph.D. but have met some Ph.D.'s that I could run circles around, and have.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Epiphany: My post was not directed at you specifically, so there's no need to take on so and roll your eyes. I do wonder, however, what is your point in saying that you can run rings around some Ph.D.s you have met?</p>
<p>I neither implied nor stated that Ph.D's are "worthless." I stated that they are not in themselves a measure of level of intellectualism: exactly what pafather correctly stated, & differentiated in a longer, more complete post. I am supporting pafather's comments, who similarly did not say that Ph.D's are "worthless."</p>
<p>I only gave myself as an example because I don't yet happen to have a Ph.D., (with a Masters in Progress) yet am considered by my peers to be quite intellectual, & that observation by others becomes confirmed when I meet a Ph.D. here or there who is less intellectual than myself. They may also be in some cases less intelligent, but I'm not interested in that. I have met some people I would call more intellectual than me that have no graduate education (therefore, less education than me).</p>
<p>As to "specializations" and "experts across the board," I discussed neither. It's a red herring, and you know it. </p>
<p><a ph.d.="" does="" not="" an="" intellectual="" make.=""> My point exactly, and ONLY my point. But if everybody on this thread believes that, why did so many posts about the numbers of Ph.D's at various colleges & U's pop up soon after the word "intellectual" became the subject of discussion, as an attempt to "prove" where intellectuals abide and where they do not abide?</a></p><a ph.d.="" does="" not="" an="" intellectual="" make.="">
<p>That was a rhetorical question, which will be answered, by those who really do believe that a Ph.D makes an intellectual, with a denial that it was said or implied.</p>
</a>
<p>I'll go part way with you. Sure, a Ph.D. does not make an intellectual, and there are plenty of intellectuals without advanced degrees, and sometimes, without degrees whatsoever. However, Ph.D.s are a handy, if imperfect, way of determining the degree of commitment of a student population to scholarship and what Commencement speakers are pleased to call "the life of the mind" simply because the most likely, and sometimes the only occupation Ph.D.s are equipped for is teaching and research.
This does not mean that Ph.D.s are the only possible claimant to the label of intellectuals; it's just easier to identify them. The fact that you do not yet have a Ph.D. is neither here nor there in the context of this discussion.</p>
<p>Oops. I guess I did say that! Thanks for the correction. I guess that will teach me to compliment Harvard!</p>
<p>Actually, using the term "intellectual" to mean highest percentage of students who pursue academic and research fields, I do think that Harvard leads the pack in the Ivy League athletic conference. Having said that, I would put Yale and Princeton very, very close. I actually think that Princeton and Yale probably offer a somewhat better undergrad experience, but I also think they tend to be a bit more pre-professional in student orientation compared to Harvard.</p>
<p>Nationally, I would put Chicago and Rice and Stanford right up there.</p>
<p>Obviously, the tech schools (MIT, CalTech, etc.) trump all of these because the fields they teach are so heavily oriented towards academic and research careers, but I view the tech schools in a completely different category. They are not really directly comparable.</p>
<p>"I actually think that Princeton and Yale probably offer a somewhat better undergrad experience, but I also think they tend to be a bit more pre-professional in student orientation compared to Harvard."</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>Harvard College has twice the percentage of pre-meds as Yale or Princeton and half the percentage of students majoring in one of the humanities. (My source for that statement is an old article--about 6 or 7 years old by now, I think--in Harvard Magazine. I have no reason to think the #s have changed.) I'm not knocking Harvard by saying that..it's fact. To me, that suggests if there's any difference in the degree of pre-professionalism among HYP, Harvard is the most pre-professional.</p>
<p>marite,
for some reason, you've focused on a mere illustration I made to demonstrate a simple concept, & blown that illustration way out of proportion, putting far more significance to it than it has. ("It's neither here nor there....")</p>
<p>Jeez, I'll simplify if for you:
People without Ph.D.'s, such as some of us on the way or only a fraction of the way there, such as certain writers & classes of writers who engage in profoundly & sometimes groundbreaking intellectual research without advanced degrees, etc. can be found now & then to be more intellectual than selected Ph.D's.</p>
<p>Interesteddad:
"teach you to compliment Harvard"? Who cares whether you love H or want to "compliment" H? (Like they need complimenting.) I would be more interested if the lesson learned would be remembering & owning up to what you wrote, & then following the line of argument that you yourself created when someone engages you in that.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Sure, a Ph.D. does not make an intellectual, and there are plenty of intellectuals without advanced degrees, and sometimes, without degrees whatsoever.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>
[quote]
People without Ph.D.'s, such as some of us on the way or only a fraction of the way there, such as certain writers & classes of writers who engage in profoundly & sometimes groundbreaking intellectual research without advanced degrees, etc. can be found now & then to be more intellectual than selected Ph.D's.
<p>Jeez people, have a little humor in your posts , maybe even some cordiality or someone's going to turn the firehose on y'all. Testy .Testy. I saw a couple of attempts at making nice, but they got rebuffed . Just in case y'all are forgetful, they don't give out a prize at the end of the show and no one is declared a winner or goes home a loser. Continue with the flogging. Just please remove the dead horse when you are finished so we don't trip over it.</p>
<p>Whew, this thread has exhausted me. But, if everyone wants to put down ID for using a certain statistic, (and I, for one, agree with ID that phd production rates are a valuable, if imperfect, measure of a school's intellectual output.) then let's see if we can come up with a better measure of what constitutes an :intellectual: college. </p>
<p>So, I ask, for discussion purposes, what are the characteristics everyone would suggest someone interested in an "intellectual" college experience look for? Is it just about finding a school with the highest test scores and GPAs and lowest selectivity? Or are there other, more specific and important indicators a prospective student should look for? Does intellectual only mean "having the smartest students and faculty" or can it also mean something else, such as "taking less than top students and sharpening their thinking ability over the course of four years." Is an "intellectual college" only about what happens during the four years, or does it also involve how college changes your outlook and intellectual curiousity? Is "intellectualism" a process or an output? Most importantly, what goes on at a so-called "intellectual college" that identifies it as such?</p>
<p>My thoughts: a true "intellectual atmosphere" requires a curricular emphasis on questioning, discussion, and heated debate. I also think it is a shame that ALL of the schools participating in the Naitonal Survey of Student Engagement don't share the results for their schools --- I suspect that if the results were shared, they might throw a few hallowed truths about typical college rankings and college prestige on their bums. But, I'm open to other suggestions about what everyone sees as the most important way to measure intellectualism on college campuses. I believe this is an important consideration for parents and students who are looking for more than just career preparation in their college education.</p>
<p>There are the occasional lovers of knowledge/wisdom, geeks and nerds who attend them, backed up by an abundant array of black-clad posers and pontificators. </p>
<p>I have friends attending most of the colleges mentioned in this thread and I don't think that they would consider themselves intellectualneither would the teachers who eloquently and dutifully recommended them; I wouldn't call myself intellectual--what a word--in good company (...without a hefty offer of scholarship money and an inordinate amount of praise).</p>
<p>I will, however, be doing a double major and one of those two majors will be philosophy, a traditional (economically useless) field of study to be sure, which might gain me a pitiful look in some out-of-the-way intellectual beauty contestsmaybe even this one [applause light flashing, as the spelling-bee lumbers along to the last round]. </p>
<p>Think of the scarecrow in the Wizard of OZ. </p>
<p>The Wizard bequeaths a document written in Latin and a man-of-straw transforms into a wanna-be, formula-spitting, temple-grinding intellectual which would be, Im sure, an ornament to any of the colleges mentioned above...what if the Great-OZdelighted with such alchemical resultswould have dug deeper into his magic trunk and handed straw-man a second piece of gilded paper, gold-stamped "PhD"; Id bet the straw on straw-mans head would have sprung a post-scythe-crop of winter-wheat. </p>
<p>Deep-people will, I believe, rise like wheat from straw at any school, even without college. There are levels, kinds and degrees of deepness (but no degrees in "Deepness"), independent of academic category history is full of them, so is your local town and dairy-farm.</p>
<p>
[quote]
a true "intellectual atmosphere" requires a curricular emphasis on questioning, discussion, and heated debate.
[/quote]
Carolyn: It's a good definition. By the way, your definition of intellectual atmosphere links to another thread started by ID on what a Swarthmore prof considers a good reasding assignment.
You ask tough questions. I don't think there are easy answers, hence the reliance on statistics such as Ph.D. production. These statistics fail to capture all who would qualify as intellectuals--writers seldom have Ph.D.s, for example--, but, short of surveying everybody, they are the best indicators we can come up with of the intellectual atmosphere (or lack thereof) at a college.
In my opinion, colleges that seek to build a diverse student body out of applicants who show passion for different pursuits are more likely to nurture intellectualism than those who go after well rounded applicants. In the diverse student body, there will be the intellectually lopsided applicants, such as those ID tells us are flagged by the Williams adcom.
At large and midsized universities, there will be a significant number of such students to make an impact on the intellectual life of the school; and they are likely to go on to earn advanced degrees. LACs are more homogeneous in character; some will be highly intellectual and produce large numbers of students going on to earn Ph.D.s, and some are less so. If we were to look at the pool of applicants in the top Ph.D. programs in the humanities and social sciences, we would see that they admit heavily among one another's undergraduates and among a fairly small range of LAcs. Swarthmore, Reed, Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Carleton, Wesleyan, Middlebury, and some others are well represented and have been for a long time.
[quote]
Is an "intellectual college" only about what happens during the four years, or does it also involve how college changes your outlook and intellectual curiousity? Is "intellectualism" a process or an output? Most importantly, what goes on at a so-called "intellectual college" that identifies it as such?
[/quote]
I find this particularly hard to answer. Most high school students go to college unsure of what they want to study: In college, they are presented with courses and fields of study that were totally unavailable in high school. That is why colleges do not ask students to declare a major before the end of freshman year or even sophomore year. Of course, there are always the students who thought to major in science and discover a passion for classics or East Asian studies, or religion. I suspect, however, that these students had chosen pre-med because they were doing well in sciences at the high school level without necessarily having a passion for them and because the sciences seemed to offer a safe career path. But I don't know whether their discovery of the delights of classics, East Asian Studies, etc... are a function of a particular college or of the college experience more generally.</p>
<p>I agree with Carolyn that a true intellectual atmosphere is a curricular emphasis on debate and heated discussion. I think the purpose of a liberal arts education is to turn bright students into sharp critical thinkers....something that does require training and is emphasized in some colleges and universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Swarthmore, Amherst, Wesleyan, Williams, Reed. PhD production may be a very inaccurate guage (spelling?).</p>
<p>I may not be the best judge of this (I am an engineer and did not get a liberal arts education in college) but I do see the change in my son after completing his first year....and I'm happy with the change (in other words, I was happy to pay 42k for this :)).</p>
<p>I concur with your list, Achat. From watching my S's experience this year, I'd add Columbia to the list emphatically. Choosing the Core Curriculum is definitely an expression of pure intellectualism, as it's basically choosing to take a lot of classes which are focused on ideas in themselves. There is a tremendous amount of thinking about thinking. Watching my S develop his mind and chew on so many great thinkers has been a real pleasure; i'd love to go back and take Lit Hum myself!</p>
<p>How come I don't see Oberlin and St. John's mentioned as intellectual schools? Why are a vast majority of intellectual schools on the East Coast?</p>
<p>What's wrong with Pomona, Occidental, Stanford, Whitman, Carleton, Rice and Grinnell?</p>